Carrier route record

DLSJC→LAX

Delta Air Lines · San Jose to Los Angeles

Flights: 454
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SJC to LAX earns an A−. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 454 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 2,053 at 92.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SJC to LAX record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 147 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 440 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.08%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.6%

Every carrier on SJC to LAX, 4,433 flights

These figures cover 454 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 18 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SJC to LAX

Delta flew 454 of the 4,433 flights on SJC to LAX, about 10% of it. Its 92.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to American at 66.7%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 92.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,823 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SJC to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	2,053	92.6%	73 min	0.39%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	454	92.3%	50 min	3.08%	A−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	96	82.6%	56 min	4.17%	B−
Southwest Airlines	1,823	78.9%	47 min	0.44%	B+
American Airlinesthin sample	6	66.7%	29 min	0.00%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 454 flights.

5am–8am91 flights91.2%
8am–11am84 flights92.4%
11am–2pm55 flights94.3%
2pm–5pm60 flights91.1%
5pm–8pm143 flights92.9%
8pm–5am21 flights—

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The time of day barely matters here. The 11am–2pm window tops the set at 94.3% and 2pm–5pm sits at 91.1%, 3 points apart across 454 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 143 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SJC to LAX through the year

Jan–Mar 2026168 flights88.9%
Apr–Jun 2026286 flights94.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 92.3% on time across 454 flights.

Split by quarter, Delta on SJC to LAX logged 168 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 286 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 92.3% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 96.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 85.2%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 1,697 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
19%

60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 1,697 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 1,697 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.08%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 308 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.4% on time across 455 flights, 6 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 454 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SJC to LAX

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 50 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 440 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures